Michigan Effort Shows G.O.P. Sway in State Contests

As Republican leaders in Washington grappled after the election with their failure to unseat President Obama, Dick DeVos, one of Michigan’s wealthiest men, began dialing up state lawmakers in Lansing.

Although Mr. Obama won Michigan handily, Republicans had kept control of the Legislature. A union-backed ballot measure to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the State Constitution was defeated, thanks to an aggressive campaign against it that was financed in part by $2 million of DeVos family money.

The time had come, Mr. DeVos told Republican lawmakers, for the bold stroke they were considering: a law banning requirements that workers pay union dues or fees, in the state where the modern American labor movement was born. If the lawmakers later found themselves facing recalls or tough re-election fights, Mr. DeVos told them, he would be there to help.

“That was when I started to say, you know what, this thing could happen,” Mr. DeVos said on Friday. “These people really are serious and committed.”

Yet much of the groundwork for the quick victory was laid months and years before by a loose network of donors, strategists and conservative political groups that has sought to win Republican control of legislatures around the country and limit unions’ political power. Their bet: that money invested in local elections would yield concrete policy victories that could not be had in Washington.

Where the big-spending conservative groups active in this year’s presidential race had little to show for their millions of dollars, the state efforts were strikingly successful. While Mr. Obama was winning onetime red states like Virginia and swing states like Michigan and Ohio, Republicans made large gains in state offices in many of the same battlegrounds. Starting next year, Republicans will have one-party control in almost half of the state capitals in the country.

In Michigan, the drive to ban mandatory union payments, known by supporters as “right to work,” included national conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, founded by the philanthropists David and Charles Koch, and a potent coalition of local business groups and donors led by Mr. DeVos, whose billionaire father, Richard DeVos Sr., a founder of Amway, has attended the Kochs’ twice-yearly gatherings of conservative donors and leaders.

The DeVos family contributed more than $1 million to the state Republican Party this year, about a third of all its donations. When unions sought the constitutional amendment that would have guaranteed their right to bargain, known as Proposal 2, the DeVos family gave at least $2 million to a committee fighting the effort. The casino mogul Sheldon Adelson contributed another $2 million. Harold Simmons, a Texas industrialist, gave $500,000.

When the union-backed referendum was defeated, the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group run by an employee of a DeVos family company, started a $1 million advertising campaign to support the legislation banning mandatory union payments. Americans for Prosperity, which set up a local chapter in Michigan five years ago and held several conferences for advocates this year, deployed volunteers to make thousands of phone calls around the state, pressing Michigan residents to call lawmakers.

“The air cover helped lawmakers do what they wanted to do,” said Jase Bolger, a Republican who is the speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives. “There was a lot of caution in starting.”

The effort duplicated other recent successes in the Midwest, where conservatives have seized on the struggling economy and population loss to push for smaller state budgets, lower taxes and laws limiting unions. In Indiana, where Democrats lost their majority in the State House of Representatives after the 2010 election, Republicans enacted the region’s first right-to-work law early this year.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker, backed by groups like Americans for Prosperity, signed into law limits on collective bargaining and survived a recall effort in June, drawing large contributions from Mr. DeVos, Mr. Adelson and Bob Perry, a Texas homebuilder and “super PAC” donor.

Voters in the region have “seen economic liberalism in its full maturity, and they haven’t necessarily liked what they were seeing,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity.

Union leaders, who poured millions of dollars into the Michigan battle, suggested that Republicans had succeeded in passing anti-union bills only through stealth. Mr. Walker and Mr. Snyder shied away from the issue during their own campaigns, the leaders said, and then rushed bills through with little notice. In Ohio, they noted, voters last year overturned by referendum a new state law restricting collective bargaining rights.

“The anti-union modus operandi has been deception, plain and simple,” said Chris Policano, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Many of the same donors and strategists behind the Republicans’ robust network of super PACs have also, with less fanfare, been financing efforts to elect Republican state lawmakers. Three years ago, Ed Gillespie, a former Republican national chairman, took over a little-known group, the Republican State Leadership Committee, hoping to increase the party’s control of statehouses and ensure it a favorable position for Congressional redistricting.

Working closely with American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, Mr. Gillespie has raised almost $60 million, mostly from corporations. Wealthy conservatives have also contributed, like Mr. Perry and John Templeton, a Philadelphia philanthropist who also gave $100,000 to the Michigan referendum campaign.

The group has spent more than $1.6 million in Michigan, helping Republicans win the House in 2010 and defend their majority in 2012. Today, Mr. Bolger, the House speaker, leads the committee’s caucus of state lawmakers.

Similar organizations run by the Democratic Party have raised substantially less money in recent years. Wealthy donors like Tim Gill, a Colorado software entrepreneur whose millions have helped defeat state lawmakers opposed to gay rights, have worked to elect Democrats at the state level. But they have been less apt to work in concert across the country.

Others are occupied with other political battles. Jon Stryker, a Michigan billionaire who has long been a major patron of the state’s Democratic Party, contributed no money to the fight for Proposal 2.

Even so, it took the election two years ago of Mr. Snyder, a wealthy former technology executive, to open the door to a major policy change in the state. At a gathering of Tea Party activists this year, Ron Weiser, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who has worked with Mr. DeVos, said Republicans had long pondered introducing right-to-work legislation but had been encouraged to wait until the state had a Republican governor. (A video of the remarks was later posted on YouTube by Michigan Democrats.)

“Now we have a legislature,” said Mr. Weiser, who is now the national finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. “And we have a governor.”

Mr. Snyder, too, was helped by national outside groups. In 2010, the Republican Governors Association sponsored $3.5 million worth of television commercials promoting Mr. Snyder and set up a Michigan affiliate that gave $5.2 million to the Michigan Republican Party.

The spending appeared to be part of a money swap that was engineered by the governors’ association, according to Rich Robinson of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a watchdog organization. The spending by the group almost exactly equaled the amount contributed to it by Michigan donors, replacing money that largely came from Michigan corporate donors and could not legally be given to Michigan candidates with funds from wealthy out-of-state contributors, such as Mr. Perry and David Koch.

When elected, Mr. Snyder moved quickly to overhaul Michigan’s tax code and to balance the budget. Yet for months, he urged fellow Republicans not to pick a battle over legislation outlawing required union fees.

That changed, lawmakers said, after the unions lost on Proposal 2. Mr. Snyder edged closer to the idea, and at a meeting early this month, “he agreed the debate was on his agenda,” Mr. Bolger said.

Mr. Snyder also spoke before the election with Mr. DeVos.

“I was encouraging the governor to get personally more engaged in Proposal 2,” Mr. DeVos said. “That we really needed him out helping us on that initiative.”

Asked about the influence of Mr. DeVos and others, Sara Wurfel, a spokeswoman for Mr. Snyder, said of the governor: “He is interested in hearing what people think, and he was hearing from everyone all the time. But ultimately what he decides to do is what he thinks is the right public policy decision.”

Mr. DeVos said he had not spoken to the governor since the election, although he was invited to holiday parties at the governor’s residence, held the week Mr. Snyder announced he would support the bill banning mandatory contributions to unions.

Mr. DeVos said he had a scheduling conflict. “I really owe him a call to congratulate him,” he said, “and thank him for stepping up and doing the right thing.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 17, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Michigan Efforts Shows G.O.P. Sway in State Contests. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe